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I’ve had several discussions with colleagues on how to illustrate public relations, in books, magazines and in teaching tutorials (the discussion could also consider PR blogs).

I take an old-fashioned print journalist’s view and tend to think in words, not pictures. Think how few books on PR are well-illustrated (Stuart Ewen’s PR! is an exception, but his illustrations are drawn from history and advertising). Think how most presentations/proposals are formed in words. Most PR outputs are words, not pictures (though a balance is needed).

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3 Responses to “How visual is PR?”

Well I think it’s easy to how how visual PR is. Just open up a newspaper and point out the photocalls. More so for the tabloids where creative Consumer PR concepts are required. I know someone is going to chirp in with a ‘Put a couple of models in bikinis and your picture will land in the papers.’ But as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words.
I was recently involved in a child saftey initiative in Ireland and at the launch we had a photographer involved to picture some of the children involved. Needless to say we landed in all of the Irish national broadsheets and a couple of the tabloids, making a much greater impact than the press release because of the emotional connection.
I think the only way to teach the visual aspect of PR is to bring a few papers into the class over a period of time and show them what picture editors like, and then set a topic and have a brainstorm to come up with a photocall concept. You’d also need a couple of business maagzines to illustrate corporate shots.
Last, but not least, explain about how planning when to hold a photocall is very important because despite how innovative your concept is, if there’s a lot else going on then you may still not land. And there’s always the unforeseen circumstances like the weather, although that seems to apply a lot more here in Ireland!

I think it has something to do with the fact, that a lot of PR pros are former journalists or people with a background that is rather in “writing” than in visualizing. Just look at how few information designers there are in PR departments. So a lot of thinking there is done rather in words than in images.